


Counting Freckles

by athaclena



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dean's Freckles, Dreams and Nightmares, Established Relationship, Human Castiel, Light Angst, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, mainly fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 10:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7930939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athaclena/pseuds/athaclena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean wakes up to find Cas counting all the new freckles he's got since being remade. Light angst, mostly fluff, some discussion of mental health stuff. One-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Freckles

**Author's Note:**

> There is a single mild use of ableist language in the narrative, but I think it's character appropriate. Dean Winchester is problematic sometimes, but he tries.

Dean found himself being shaken awake. “Wha'? Hmnrgh?” he grunted. The morning light fell through the shitty motel's shittier curtains and across his face. He threw his arm over his eyes with a groan.

“Dean. Turn over Dean. Then you can go back to sleep. You have to turn over.”

“Wha'? Wazi snorin'?” His dream was already slipping through his grasp and he could feel himself moving farther away from sleep.

“No, I need to keep counting. I'm up to fifty-seven. You need to turn over so I can do the other side.”

Dean cracked a gummy eyelid open and peered at Castiel from the shadow of his arm. “Cas. What are you doing?”

The former angel was sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him, chewing his lip and twisting his fingers together. “I'm counting the new ones. You need to turn over.”

Giving up on falling back asleep for the time being, Dean rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned hugely. “The new what, Cas. You gotta break it down for me.”

“Freckles, Dean,” Cas replied. “You have new freckles. I'm counting them.”

“...Okay,” Dean said slowly. “Why, though?”

Cas looked at him seriously, “When I remade you the last thing I did was put your freckles back. I knew where each one was and I replaced them all. Every one.” He sighed deeply. “I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep so I was doing the “creepy staring thing”,” Dean could hear the quotemarks drop into place, “and I noticed a new freckle. And then another. So I started counting. I need to finish, Dean. Please turn over. I don't want to lose count.”

Alarmbells sounded in Dean's mind. He might not be the emotionally intuitive one, thanks for that Sam, but he was damn good at reading people, and Cas was tense and twitchy, fight-or-flight mode activated even though he was sitting naked on a bed.

This could get real bad, real fast if he didn't handle it right. Probably best to go along with it for now. “Okay, angel. You move me around until you can see all the bits that were covered before.” He rolled over, getting closer to Cas but not touching.

He was moved around firmly but gently until his position was to Castiel's liking, and he dozed lightly to whispered counting and commentary. He didn't let himself fall back asleep. Years of stake-outs had taught him the trick of staying very close to conciousness while still allowing his body to rest, and he used it now.

Dean was pretty sure he knew what this was about, and he didn't want Cas to fall back into the habit of hating himself. And, honestly, Sam might be happier talking about this sort of crap but that didn't mean that Dean couldn't see it or understand it. It was just that he hated talking about feelings. Sam thought it was because he was a repressed victim of the patriarchy, or something, but really it was that he had never learned how. He stopped talking when emotions ran high; had done since he was four years old, “Take your brother and run,” and the months of silence afterwards.

He drifted dangerously close to unhappy memories and was relieved when Cas broke his reverie. His volume hadn't increased, but the note of agitation in his voice had spiked up again. “Eighty-four new ones. What about the bigger ones though? One, two, three...”

“Cas. Angel. You gotta stop now. I got eighty-four new freckles since you put me back together. You don't need to count the bigger ones too,” he murmured gently, stretching with a sigh and curling his body around Cas's legs.

“But I – I might forget their shapes,” Castiel said urgently. “I don't want to forget, Dean. It's important to remember. You're important to remember,” he trailed off. His hands clenched around Dean's arm. “I'm doing it again, aren't I.” It wasn't a question.

“Little bit. It's okay.” Dean tried to keep his voice as soothing as possible, tried to keep himself loose and relaxed, trailing nonsense patterns into Cas's skin where he was holding him.

“It's not -” Cas choked off the rest of his sentence with a shuddering, bitten-off sob, and Dean propped himself up and pulled Cas down against his chest, holding him tightly.

“It's okay, Cas. You got this. I got you. Everything'll be okay.”

He didn't do this often, the counting. Sam said, privately, it was OCD. Dean disagreed; he thought it was grief. Counting stuff helped Cas to process the loss of his senses and regain control. He wasn't crazy, he was in pain, and if counting freckles helped him then Dean wasn't going to stop him. Better than pills and orgies and terrible dead eyes.

Cas never took long to regain control. “Sorry,” he breathed. “I have should let you sleep. I – you need your four hours.”

“Nah, it's okay, we can make Sam drive today,” Dean said. “We can lay out in the back and make out. It'll drive him crazy, it'll be great.”

Cas's laughter rumbled through his chest, and Dean smiled: mission accomplished. “You wanna talk about what set it off?” he offered.

“I was afraid of dreaming,” Cas replied simply. His dreams were overwhelming sometimes, and he stayed awake to avoid them until he collapsed in exhaustion after a couple days of increasingly bizarre behaviour. Avoidance tactic, Sam said; displacement activity with a side of self-harm. Dean thought Sam was too eager to diagnose stuff. Cas had a million years of memories crammed into one tiny brain. Dean's own dreams were weird enough sometimes, perfectly mundane things set against a backdrop of Hell or vice-versa; he couldn't even imagine the weirdness that Cas lived through every night.

“Okay,” Dean said. “You want to try and catch forty winks now? We got another hour or so before we have to leave the room.”

“I could manage forty,” Cas said grudgingly. He shook his limbs out and nuzzled into a more comfortable place on Dean's chest. “But not forty-one. You have to wake me before then.”

“Sure. Anything for you.” Dean kissed the top of his head, resigned himself to his right arm going dead, and held him close.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos always appreciated. I'm on Tumblr as [knittedgauntlets](http://knittedgauntlets.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Edit: Retrospective on writing this piece and other wankery available [here](http://knittedgauntlets.tumblr.com/post/151072730917/writing-counting-freckles) if you want to read it. If not that's fine too.


End file.
